Horror In The East: Japan And The Atrocities Of World War II

Despite the kamikazes, the ‘one great victory’ that Hirohito and the Japanese High Command were chasing was still proving elusive. Their plan was not proving to be a strategy so much as wishful thinking — and wishful thinking began to be the order of the day. In early October 1944, Hirohito’s advisers simply misled him — they told him that overall, in a series of sea engagements, the Japanese had won great victories and that sixteen American carriers had been sunk (in reality the Imperial Navy had not sunk one of them).

Singapore was an island of vital strategic importance — essential sea lanes lay either side of it — but all the gun emplacements faced out to sea. To the north of Singapore lay jungle that was thought impassable. The only problem was, by February 1942 the Japanese had marched through it. Thirty-five thousand Japanese troops confronted a defending force of twice that number under the command of Lieutenant General Arthur Percival. The Japanese were tough, confident and resourceful. The British and their allies were inexperienced, confused and uncertain.

Similarly, the Allied fleet off Okinawa sailed virtually untroubled until the afternoon of 6 April. Then, suddenly, out of a clear sky came wave upon wave of kamikazes. ‘It was a saturation-type thing,’ says Frank Manson, a US navy communications officer. ‘I mean there was one kamikaze, and then there was two, and then three, and they’d just keep coming.’ For the first time kamikaze pilots were attacking in large groups of over thirty planes at a time, in a tactic known as kikusui or Floating Chrysanthemums.

Paul Montgomery was brought up in a deeply religious family, and still today it is obvious that he is a caring, kind man. And that is ultimately what is so disturbing about his testimony. This man who was capable of shedding tears when he saw the grave markers of US marines on Iwo Jima — a sight that still causes him to break down as he describes it today — remains unmoved by his participation in the mass killing of thousands upon thousands of Japanese women and children. His testimony is a powerful reminder of the morally numbing effect of war conducted by modern technological means.

But Montgomery and his colleagues were not completely immune from understanding that there was a difference between bombing a military base and bombing a school or hospital. ‘We didn’t talk about bombing the cities — there was just no conversation about it. Mitsubishi — yes, the factories — yes, the naval bases — yes, Yokohama, gasoline refineries — yes. But the cities, there was a kind of deadly silence there. Everybody felt — it was women and children — but it was never spoken. It was just never spoken. Even today when we have a reunion, the bombing of the cities isn’t mentioned. We talk about the military targets but we don’t talk about the bombing of the cities — it’s just kind of off limits.’

The level of sacrifice made by the marines on Iwo Jima had a profound effect not just on public opinion in the United States but also on their fellow servicemen in the Pacific. Weeks after the island had been taken, Paul Montgomery and the rest of his bomber crew landed on Iwo Jima to refuel on their way back to base on the island of Tinian: ‘We were taxiing in and I passed right by a graveyard. There were an indescribable number of marker crosses. I couldn’t describe to you how affected I was. I had never seen 7000 markers before. And when I came to realize that they were just kids like myself and that they wouldn’t be going home...’

In February 1945, as the Japanese leadership procrastinated, American marines landed on the tiny volcanic island of Iwo Jima, less than 700 miles (1100 km) south of Tokyo. The island was a vital strategic objective for the Allies, as use of its airstrips would allow bombing raids to be mounted more effectively against the home islands of Japan. Once more the Japanese response was tenacious and desperate. Beneath the sulphurous landscape the defenders, under the command of Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayahi, built a honeycomb of tunnels and fox-holes. Their fierce defence of the island cost the Americans dear — by the time it was captured, after a five-week battle, one in three of the marines who had taken part had been killed or wounded.

The action of the kamikaze pilots was inexplicable to these American sailors. After all, wasn’t the whole point of fighting in a war to try to survive it? But the Japanese pilots had been educated in a wholly different philosophy. At the core of it was not just the belief that their supreme commander, Emperor Hirohito, was a divine figure whose orders must be obeyed without question, but the spiritual faith that after death as kamikaze pilots their souls would dwell in the emperor’s own shrine. ‘Everybody at that time knew that their soul would go back to Yasukini,’ says Morimasa Yunokawa, then a pilot in the Japanese navy.